Short article: The selective directed forgetting effect: Can people forget only part of a text?

Abstract

Participants studied sentences describing two different characters and then were told to forget the sentences about only one of the characters. A second list contained sentences attributed to a third character. Subsequently, they received a recall test on the sentences about the original two characters. When the sentences could be thematically integrated, participants showed no directed forgetting relative to a control group that was never told to forget. However, with unrelated sentences, participants selectively forgot the target character's sentences without forgetting the other character's sentences. This selective directed forgetting effect is a novel empirical result. We interpret the results as consistent with Radvansky's (1999) ideas about inhibition with textual materials.